Posted by Lily on July 29, 2015

Vicki Pettersson's psychological thriller Swerve starts off at a dead sprint and doesn't let up through all of its twists and turns. Crossing the desolate expanse of road between Las Vegas and California becomes a struggle to survive when Kristine Rush and her fiancé, Daniel, are attacked at a rest stop (validating my long-held fear of rest stops). When she comes to, Daniel is gone. But the man who took him quickly contacts her, and she must decide how much she is willing to risk for the man she loves.

"Kristine?"

"We've run into some . . . some . . ."

Something bad.

"Some traffic?"

"Yes." Emboldened by my stillness, the large crow has inched closer and is now just ten feet away. It tilts its head at my whisper. "I mean no." Except . . ."

I'm at the first rest stop outside of Vegas. A man just attacked me in the bathroom. He's gone now, but so is Daniel and there's nowhere to hide except . . .

"Except?" Imogene prods, still crisp, still projecting her voice, still playing her part.

Except the phone bleeps in my hand, the triptych chimes of a text coming through, and I look down. Daniel has his phone preferences set to show messages directly on the lock screen—every second counts when you're a trauma surgeon—and that's how I find myself staring at my own name in the sender's box: KRISTINE RUSH.

And in the body of the text?

Say good-bye.
Now.
Or he dies.

What are you reading?

It’s Private Eye July at BookPage! All month long, we’re celebrating the sinister side of fiction with the year’s best mysteries and thrillers. Look for the Private Eye July magnifying glass for a daily dose of murder, espionage and all those creepy neighbors with even creepier secrets.

Posted by Cat on July 22, 2015

The latest suspense novel from Julia Heaberlin blends "CSI" with psychological drama, as a serial killer's sole survivor finds herself doubting her own past—and her own role in a man's sentencing. But as with so many popular contemporary thrillers, the more she pursues the truth, the more readers begin to doubt her narrative.

Alternating between past and present, Black-Eyed Susans contrasts the chilling details of Tessa Cartwright's abduction with the renewed search for the killer 20 years later. A man sits on death row, convicted of kidnapping Tessa and killing the other victims, the so-called Black-Eyed Susans—but an anti-death penalty lawyer and an eminent forensic scientist aren't convinced that he's guilty.

I stutter out my request. There's an immediate glint of recognition by the woman, a slight softening of her mouth. She locates the small crescent-moon scar under my eye. The woman's eyes say poor little girl, even though it's been eighteen years, and I now have a girl of my own.

"I'm Bessie Wermuth," she says. "And this is my husband, Herb. Come in, dear." Herb is scowling and leaning on his cane. Suspicious, I can tell. I don't blame him. I am a stranger, even though he knows exactly who I am. Everyone in a five-hundred-mile radius does. I am the Cartwright girl, dumped once upon a time with a strangled college student and a stack of human bones out past Highway 10, in an abandoned patch of field near the Jenkins property.

I am the star of screaming tabloid headlines and campfire ghost stories.

I am one of the four Black-Eyed Susans. The lucky one.

What are you reading?

It’s Private Eye July at BookPage! All month long, we’re celebrating the sinister side of fiction with the year’s best mysteries and thrillers. Look for the Private Eye July magnifying glass for a daily dose of murder, espionage and all those creepy neighbors with even creepier secrets.

Posted by Cat on July 15, 2015

Readers return to 1800s Scotland for the fourth mystery in Anna Lee Huber's Lady Darby series—yet another winner for fans of historical mysteries, sweet romance and strong female characters. Lady Kiera Darby is now engaged to her investigative partner, Sebastian Gage. While painting the portrait of Lady Drummond, Kiera—still healing from the emotional wounds caused by her previous husband, a wicked man—all too well recognizes the signs of an abusive marriage. She wants to help Lady Drummond but finds that her good intentions are too late. The lady is found dead, and though it's ruled a natural death, Kiera is convinced that Lord Drummond is to blame.

I glanced up and down Hanover Street, my arms wrapped around me as I shivered in the cold wind. What was taking so long? I reached up to pound the knocker on the door of Number 99 once more, bouncing on my heels, trying to warm myself. Normally, the Drummonds' ever-efficient butler, Jeffers, was prepared to let me in before I'd even climbed the steps, but this morning I'd been waiting for at least a full minute, possibly longer, for someone to answer the door.

I looked back at Philip's carriage still parked on the street. The coachman and footman stared up at me, awaiting further instructions. I offered them a weak smile and then turned to rap on the door for a fourth time.

A sinking feeling settled in my stomach as the royal blue door remained closed. Something must be very wrong for the staff to ignore my knocking for so long. Or perhaps Lady Drummond had ordered them not to answer. If so, how badly had Lord Drummon hurt her?

No. That couldn't have been it. If she hadn't wanted to see me, for whatever reason, she simply would have sent a note to cancel today's portrait session. It must have been something else.

Unless Lady Drummond was too incapacitated even to write.

What are you reading?

It’s Private Eye July at BookPage! All month long, we’re celebrating the sinister side of fiction with the year’s best mysteries and thrillers. Look for the Private Eye July magnifying glass for a daily dose of murder, espionage and all those creepy neighbors with even creepier secrets.

Posted by Hilli on July 08, 2015

As a former private investigator, crime and mystery writer Don Winslow can say he comes by it honest. The Savages author is back with a doorstopper of a sequel to The Power of the Dog, and here he continues his saga of the Mexican drug trade and its inseparable ties to the demand from U.S.

The Cartel is told over the course of 10 years from the alternating perspectives of Art Keller, a stalwart DEA agent turned peace-seeking beekeeper, and Adán Barrera, a former high-profile patron of El Federación grinding out his tough sentence in a San Diego prison. But soon, a plea deal sends Barrera back to Mexico, and the bad blood between these long-separated men reaches a boiling point that sets off an all-out cartel war on both sides of the border.

There'd been hearings—internal DEA hearings, CIA hearings, congressional hearings. Art had taken down the Barreras in direct defiance of orders from CIA, and it had been like rolling a grenade down an airplane aisle It blew p on everybody, and the damage had been tough to contain, with the New York Times and the Washington Post sniffing around like bloodhounds. Official Washington couldn’t decide if Art Keller was a villain or a hero. Some people wanted to pin a medal on him, others wanted to put him in an orange jumpsuit.
Still others wanted him to just disappear.
Most people were relieved when, after all the testimony and the debriefings were conclude, the man once known as “the Border Lord” did it on his own. And maybe Taylor is here, Keller thinks, to make sure I stay disappeared.

What are you reading this week?

It’s Private Eye July at BookPage! All month long, we’re celebrating the sinister side of fiction with the year’s best mysteries and thrillers. Look for the Private Eye July magnifying glass for a daily dose of murder, espionage and all those creepy neighbors with even creepier secrets.

Posted by Trisha on July 01, 2015

Ambitous, sprawling and complex, Joshua Cohen's second novel is an epic attempt to tell the story of the digital age, from computing's early days to modern times. But this paen to technology, written by a GenX writer who is of the digital age but not from it, also makes a strong case for the timelessness of the book. His narrator, also named Josh Cohen, is a failed novelist turned ghostwriter, and from page one his voice is unforgettable:

If you're reading this on a screen, fuck off. I'll only talk if I'm gripped with both hands.

Paper of pulp, covers of board and cloth, the thread from threadstuff or—what are bindings made of? hair and plant fibers, glue from boiled horsehooves?

Posted by Lily on June 24, 2015

Although the cripplingly shy recluse Howie watched Emily Phane grow up next door, he’s never actually spoken to his only neighbor for miles. Despite this, he cares for her in a sweetly paternal way, and he’s aware that there’s definitely something wrong with her. He’s been watching as she gradually becomes a recluse herself—plus there’s the odd fact that she’s taken up the habit of night gardening. This is an achingly beautiful and unexpectedly hilarious portrait of two deeply sad, deeply sensitive people reaching the breaking point and pulling each other back.

Howie approached the bathroom window. He allowed his eyes time to adjust. The treetops moved as if the air had slowed and thickened into water. Pines, mostly, but some elm. There was no moon. Then there was: hard, white, and rolling from behind a bank of silver clouds. He focused on his neighbor’s house, its weak glow. Beyond this, the dark.

And he saw her. She was moving along the edge of the woods like you might pace beside a pool you’re not quite ready to jump into. Then, just when Howie began to think that maybe she wouldn’t tonight, she did. She was gone, into the forest, leaving only the slightest splash of night behind her. That and Howie, his face against the bathroom window.

Posted by Trisha on June 17, 2015

Laura Dave's latest novel is a winning family comedy set in Napa Wine Country. Just one week before her wedding, Georgia Ford finds out her fiancé has been keeping a 4-and-a-half-year-old secret from her. Distraught, she flees her final dress fitting for the refuge of her family home, The Last Straw winery. But it turns out her parents—and her brothers, Finn and Bobby—might have some more surprises in store for her.

Coming out of my parents' bedroom was a large man. Two hundred and fifty pounds large. With hair and skin I didn't recognize. In a towel.

My mother, in a matching towel, was standing close to him.

This man, who was not my father.

I dropped the phone. "Oh my God!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

"Oh my God!" My mother screamed back.

The man moved away, backward into my parents' bedroom, which he apparently knew all too well.

He reached out his hand. "Henry," he said. "Henry Morgan."

I was stuck in place, right at the top of the stairs. I reached, as though it made sense, for this man's hand.

My mother covered her mouth in abject horror. I thought it was her disgrace at being caught. But then she reached for me, touching my cheek with the front of her hand, then with the back.

Posted by Cat on June 10, 2015

Rick Hoffman has fallen on hard times—he's lost his fiancée and his job, and his only option is to move into his parents' decrepit old home. But then he finds a huge pile of cash hidden in the walls of the house. His elderly father, Leonard, is still alive, but he's in a nursing home and unable to communicate, so no help there. Rick was formerly an investigative journalist, so the mystery of the cash and how it got there—and what his father knows about it—gets his full attention.

The newest from Finder is an absolute page-turner, a fast and entertaining read.

"Let's see your hands, Dad." He took hold of Len's left hand and began to clip his father's thick grooved nails, and Brenda drifted out of the room.

Rick clipped slowly. His father held out each hand, one at a time. It felt oddly intimate. It was like taking care of a small child. He thought about how everything sooner or later comes back around. He realized with a jolt that his eyes had teared up.

He stopped clipping. "Jeff and I were doing some exploratory demolition," he said quietly, "and we opened up the wall next to your study, at the back of the closet." Len's mouth was frozen in that haughty expression, but his watery eyes seemed anxious. They followed Rick's. "There was money back there. A huge amount of money. Millions of dollars. How did it get there, any idea?" Rick swallowed, waited. "Is it yours?"

Len's restless eyes came to a stop, looked directly into Rick's.

"Is it?"

The old man's eyes bore into his. Then he began to blink rapidly, three or four times. Nervously, maybe.

Posted by Trisha on June 03, 2015

Laurie Foos is known for her slightly surreal fiction—that might be an understatement; after all, her last novel centered on a woman who loses her uterus in a shopping mall. In her sixth novel, The Blue Girl, Irene, the mother of a teenaged daughter and 8-year-old son, begins baking her secrets into moon pies for a mysterious blue girl to consume. But although the premise is fantastical, Foos grounds it in the relationships (and secrets) within families, especially between mothers and daughters—including Irene and her daughter, Audrey.

I took one of the moon pies in my hand and thought about how carefully I had baked the tops and the bottoms, and the careful spooning of the melted chocolate, the creamy richness of the filling, and I wondered if we will ever really be rid of the secrets.

I let my daughter save a dying girl, and I did nothing. That's one of my secrets, along with so many others. All secrets are terrible, I know that, and I know that no matter how many times I feed them to the blue girl, there is no relief.

Posted by Hilli on May 27, 2015

Mat Johnson found critical acclaim with his debut, Pym, and his anticipated second novel is a fresh, whip-smart and satirical take on one Philadelphia family's struggles. When middle aged Warren Duffy returns to his father's half-renovated mansion on the heels of a divorce from his Welsh wife, his career prospects seem dim and he can barely see ahead to the next day. But suddenly his life is upended even further when he discovers his teenage daughter, Tal, after the death of her white mother. Warren and Tal steadily build a relationship after she moves in, and Warren may even find himself falling in love with Sunita, a fellow comic nerd. Johnson's Loving Day deftly explores biracial identities, family, aging, healing from lost love and finding it anew.

In the ghetto there is a mansion, and it is my father’s house. It sits on seven acres, surrounded by growling row houses, frozen in an architectural class war. Its expansive lawn is utterly useless, wild like it smokes its own grass and dreams of being a jungle. The street around it is even worse: littered with the disposables no one could bother to put in a can, the cars on their last American owner, the living dead roaming slow and steady to nowhere. And this damn house, which killed my father, is as big as it is old, decaying to gray pulp yet somehow still standing there with its phallic white pillars and the intention of eternity.

An eighteenth-century estate in the middle of the urban depression of Germantown. Before he died, my father bought the wreck at auction, planned on restoring it to its original state, just like he did for so many smaller houses in the neighborhood. Rescuing a slice of colonial history to sell it back to the city for a timeless American profit. His plan didn’t include being old, getting sick, or me having to come back to this country, to this city to pick up his pieces. This house is a job for a legion, not one person. It did—my father. I am one person now. My father’s house is on me. I see it from the back of the cab, up on its hill, rotting.